Friday, November 30, 2012

First there was the Simple Faroese Shawl, really designed by Cathy but she wants to stay anonymous so I wrote it up and posted the pattern. All profits from this pattern go to Animal Shelters.

This shawlette is meant as a first shawl experience for fairly new knitters. It's all garter stitch with a few yarn overs, knit 2 togethers and a picot cast off. It's done on US9's and uses only one skein of fingering yarn.

Then I realized that most of my shawls were aimed at intermediate knitters so designed Chatty to be a fairly easy shawl for advanced beginners. Again it uses only one skein of fingering yarn but smaller needles, stockinette stitch for the shoulder area and some easy lace at the bottom.

A few weeks ago I watched the lights blink out over NYC when Hurricane Sandy wrecked its merry way up our coast. Those lights took many days to come back on and some are still out. In honor of all the people who helped and are helping each other come back to whatever might be considered normal after such Katrina-like devastation I am donating partial proceeds from the sale of City Lights patterns to OccupySandy relief efforts.

Kits of laceweight yarn, beads and the pattern are available in my Etsy shop. $5 from each kit sale is going to OccupySandy.org for help with recovery.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Last winter, for the first time, one of my patterns, Heart to Heart was published in a National Magazine - Knitters. A month or so before publication I was sent some galley sheets to check that the pattern had no mistakes and that all of the charts, etc were included. Then a week or two later one of my Knit Knite crew mentioned she had seen the Neckerchief in the just released issue of Knitters at a LYS. HUH? So I ran over to B&N but they didn't yet have it. Then I boogied to Wegmans and sure enough it was on display. I bought 5!

So this year another pattern, VERVE, was accepted for the Winter 2013, The SKIRT Issue K109 of Knitters and I expected the same procedure. Wednesday night at Knit Knite Aimee mentioned that she was so excited to see my skirt in the newest issue of Knitters. HUH????? I knew it was expected out soon but since I had yet to receive the galleys thought it might be in December. Aimee was especially pleased to tell the folks at the knitting shop in Watkins Glen that she had seen the skirt in progress and knew me. Well that tickled me too.

So after knitting I boogied over to Wegmans but couldn't find the mag. Then I drove to B&N where it wasn't on the shelves either but asked a customer service person to check. Sure enough they had come in that day and were scheduled to be put out the next but he brought me some from the back. I promptly purchased 5!!!! Then yesterday I received my 3 complementary copies.

No matter. It's thrilling anyway.

AND there will be another of my patterns (which I am madly knitting to make the deadline), a shawl, published in the Spring Issue!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

“We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade. There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this Court. We’re not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get themselves health insurance. We are not going to do that.

“We are not going to give a 20 percent tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid’s health insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut. We’re not going to make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you’re on. We are not going to redefine rape. We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married. We’re not going to double Guantanamo. We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or [the Department of] Housing [and Urban Development] at the federal level. We are not going to spend two trillion dollars on the military that the military does not want. We are not scaling back on student loans because the country’s new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents. We’re not vetoing the Dream Act. We are not self-deporting. We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January. We are not going to have, as a President, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help, and there was no apology, not ever.

“We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not bringing Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War. We are not going to do it. We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country, and we said ‘no’ last night, loudly.

“Ohio really did go to President Obama last night, and he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii, and he really is legitimately President of the United States, again, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month, and the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy, and the polls were not skewed to over-sample Democrats, and Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math, and climate change is real, and rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes, and evolution is a thing, and Benghazi was ‘on’ us, it was not a scandal ‘by’ us, and no one is taking away any one’s guns, and taxes have not gone up, and the deficit is dropping, actually, and Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, and the moon landing was real, and FEMA is not building concentration camps, and UN election observers are not taking over Texas, and moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in the country are not the same thing as communism…

“…in this country, we have a two-party system in government and the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems, and we debate between those possible solutions, and by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff…if the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed, door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate between competing, feasible ideas about real problems…they [GOP] are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them I’m sure, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right and center.